ITH Poker Forum

[Numbershark]

What does ICM stand for?

[Kschub]

Thanks for sharing, I have never seen one of these before.

[darvon]

Also look at SNGPT.

[toom]

chillin.... your ICM is linked on the foxsports.com poker resources and "best of" page.

[CroMagnon]

From Chillin's website explaining ICM

The fundamental problem with using your chips to calculate pot odds in a tournament is that tournament chips have no fixed value. In addition, different chips have different values to them. That is to say, if you were to compare the value of a person's last remaining chip, or the 10,000th chip in a stack of 10,000, the last chip has much more value than the 10,000th chip, because once you lose that last chip, you are out of the tournament, while when you lose the 10,000th chip, you still have 9,999 chips remaining.

I think there is a typo error in this paragraph that is confusing me. Or I am hopelessly lost and confused. Check the bold in the paragraph. should that number be 100,000? If not can someone explain this to me?

Thanks,
Cro

[chillin411]

This is another way to look at it - this might make more sense. I should probably rewrite that paragraph, as it's worded a bit oddly.

Suppose you were playing a satellite and there were two seats available. Here are the chipstacks, blinds are 50/100:

Button: 100
SB: 100,000
Hero (BB): 100,000

Button folds, SB pushes, and you have QQ, and SB tells you that he has AK (and we know he's telling the truth).

Now, we are a slight favourite in this hand. If this were a cash game with this information, this is an extremely easy call. In this tournament, it's an insta-fold.

The reason is that if we win, we don't really gain that much, as button was likely to lose anyway. We gain something like 0.08% of the prize pool if we win, but we lose everything -- 49.92% -- if we lose. This adds up to 50% of the prize pool, because there are two seats available.

So thinking about it this way, in this situation your current 100,000 chips are worth 49.92% of the prize pool, and the 100,000 chips you would win are worth 0.08% of the prize pool. It'd be a fair statement to say the first 100,000 chips you currently have are worth more than the 100,000 additional chips you'd win.

[CroMagnon]

Now I understand and see that there is no typo in the original paragraph. And yes, because of the presence of shorty, I would insta-fold in this situation as well. At what point does the number of chips ththat shorty has influence this decision? What if they had 25k? 50k?

Thanks,
Cro

[CroMagnon]

Is there an ICM that will read in a HH?

Thanks,
Cro

[chillin411]

If I had AA, the worst I could be is a 77.5/22.5 favourite. That's AA vs 65s.

In that situation, when I'd think about calling with AA is more dependent on blinds than ICM. That's to say, it'd be on the order of hundreds rather than 50k, 25k, or even 10k.

The programs that use ICM to calculate tournament equity typically have the ability to read in tournament hand histories.

[paulnortonyoung]

Let me start by saying I have no financial interest in this software.

You may be interested to try out “Pokerhound”. The program gives you:

Pot Odds Calculations & Recommendations
“All In or Fold” Strategy Recommendations
Opponent Stats, including a HUD (stats are similar to PT, but more in-depth)
Real-Time ICM calculator & Recommendations

In my opinion, the real-time ICM calculator is worth the cost of the software on its own (its far cheaper than the only alternative).

[Qubit]

Hi all,
I've just spent the last few months working on some ICM algorithms. They are available online and absolutely free. The ICM Calculator is able to compute ICM equities for 10 players with 10 payout spots and the ICM Applicator achieves identical results to SnGPT! Check them out at:

www,icmpoker,com

Let me know what you think
Qubit

[clabbers]

Chillin or Qubit, can you tell us about the general value of player eliminations versus chip stacks? Specifically is it worth foregoing a small equity advantage in order to increase the chance of busting a player, and how much does the answer change as the number of players decreases.

The chart might look something like this:
Top 5 paid
player 1 all in for 10% of original stack, players 2 and 3 have 90% of original stack behind:

With a 57/43 advantage, the ICM score of checking it down to elimnate the 1st player of 40 is better than the ICM score of raising the dry pot
With a 58/42 advantage, the ICM score of checking it down to elimnate the 2nd player of 40 is better than the ICM score of raising the dry pot
...
With a 65/35 advantage, the ICM score of checking it down to elimnate the 30th player of 40 is better than the ICM score of raising the dry pot
With a 66/34 advantage, the ICM score of checking it down to elimnate the 31st player of 40 is better than the ICM score of raising the dry pot